The following are some comments I made in a contentious online conversation about snare drum training and drum set training— or playing— and the differences between the two, that I think stand on their own— edited […]
Category: teaching
You should get drum lessons from me
Making my periodic public observance that I don’t get enough drum students through this site. I know everybody doesn’t instantly get everything I post on here. And I know people are overloaded with information about […]
16th note reading boot camp
Plotting out an intensive couple of lessons with a younger student, who has been doing extremely well with his playing the past year, but who is deficient reading 16th note rhythms. It’s not unexpected that […]
How to stop – 01
Kind of a mundane item here— a multi-parter, believe it or not— mainly for teachers, about handling ordinary materials in a more real-life musical way, including how to stop in the conversation. Younger students and […]
Teaching in Washington
The drive home— the wilds of central Washington. I was out for a couple of days teaching some kids in the tri-cities area in central Washington state. The people who run the Portland Youth Jazz […]
Garrison soldier / combat soldier
There were four platoons in the company, and of them all, Second Platoon was considered the best-trained and in some ways the worst-disciplined. The platoon had a reputation for producing terrible garrison soldiers— men who […]
Sidebar: mind what you say
Teachers, speaking to students: I know everyone thinks we’re not being heard, but a lot of them are more engaged than we think they are, and a lot of things we say to them, particularly […]
Natural music
Some open ended musing here. Lately I’m getting a lot of accidental music from younger drum students. Like with that “worst drummer ever” video from a few months ago, they naturally do some things that we […]
Very occasional quote of the day: a thousand answers
“Teaching requires just as much time and effort as playing. There are a thousand ways to ask one question and a thousand ways to answer it. You’ve got to have the time to understand your […]
On Stanley Spector
In the spirit of that recent quasi-paranoid rant, here’s something I wrote some years ago and never posted. Any time I think I’m getting too dogmatic in my writing, I look up the following personality. […]
Delayed continuity
I’ve been looking some piano literature lately, reading an old book called Practising the Piano (British spelling) by Frank Merrick. You can get it on Scribd without having to pay anyone but Scribd. Another site […]
Accents in Reed
TOTAL nerd stuff here. I use the accent pages in Progressive Steps to Syncopation (pp. 47-49) with my students for convenience, but I find them be a pain. They’re thorough, but poorly balanced— so if […]